After directing Sermon based Small Group campaigns for many years I have discovered there are foundational questions we need to answer each year. This may be your first campaign or tenth, either way, here are some foundational questions you need to answer for each campaign.
1. What is the goal (hope to accomplish) of conducting this campaign? It happened a few years ago in our evaluation meeting of the 6-week campaign. As we sat in staff meeting discussing the campaign no one had any excitement about what had just consumed hours and weeks of our energy. There was not a clear answer as to what we accomplished in the campaign. Then someone asked: “What was our goal for this campaign?” No one had an answer. As Zig Ziglar said ““If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.”
2. What is success for the Small Group Leader? Is it to baptize a member of the group; grow the group larger than any other small group; enter into a disciple making relationship with a member, start a church; have stories of life change; build community; etc? All of these are grand endeavors, but clarifying the win for the leader will give them something at which to aim. Our on-going success goals for a small group can be found at lifepointchurch.org/groups
3. How will we connect the unconnected to a group? There are a lot of ways to conduct a Connection event and we try something new at least every 3 years. We help potential leaders think about this question on our “Leader Interest Application.” We help leaders think about the unconnected at the time they express interest in leading a group. A couple of months before the campaign we begin to promote the connection event to existing leaders to encourage co-leaders to start a group and how they will add to their group. Each potential leader should be able to think of at least 2 couples they would like to invite to their new group.
4. How will we prepare and/or train the leaders for this campaign? This has become a passion of mine as I have watched various methods of preparation succeed in different ways. One thing I know, the energy and effort I give to preparing leaders before the campaign has never been wasted. We have given books away to every leader, had Facebook chat sessions, shot videos, used RightNow Media trainings, brought in speakers/trainers for certain resources and conducted Launch Lunches weeks prior to campaign. We are currently using a 6-week development process that covers making disciples and leading a group. This process overlaps our connection event which has encouraged many new leaders after the big event.
5. What do we do after the campaign is over? I learned this one in 2003 but have to remind myself and our team every campaign. In 2003 our church did the Purpose Driven Life campaign, 40 Days of Purpose. While this campaign was life-changing for many as well as community-building for the entire church, we did not plan for day 41. When the campaign ended everyone looked around and asked What’s next? We did not have suggested small group studies nor a daily devotional plan. We had not taught people how to develop their own devotional methods, resources to use or how to discover service opportunities on their own. Now, one of our key questions to ask as we plan every campaign is What do we plan to do on day 41?
What more Small Group leadership help? Check out questions like these and other helpful thought provoking stories in Connecting in Communities, Understanding the Dynamics of Small Groups.
